


Shattered and Gone

by TheUltimateFanGirl7



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alfred - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Graphic depictions of violence - Freeform, Insane Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Temporarily at least, at least for a while, but I’ll try to warn you, he’s his own tag
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:20:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25009879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheUltimateFanGirl7/pseuds/TheUltimateFanGirl7
Summary: Soulmates are said to be the other half of your soul, so what happens if they die? What happens when you lose that half, and then splinter the remaining half until their nothing but dust left?
Relationships: Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug/Jason Todd
Comments: 16
Kudos: 102





	Shattered and Gone

**Author's Note:**

> First I just wanted say that I plan on naming each chapter after one of my pets, it will give me a goal, at least. Of the chapter deserves another title or you have a suggestion, let me know, and I’ll put it in parentheses so you know the actual title of the chapter.
> 
> This story will be filled with angst and violence and darkness. If you don’t want to read the worst of it, I’ve written warnings in, just skip to the end of the chapter where a brief, violence summary will be given. 
> 
> I know I have several incomplete stories or series, and I am working on them. I should have another Secrets chapter up soon. I have severe depression so I literally lost the will to do anything at all, but as i was recovering I was suddenly hit with the need to just /create/. My room is now a mess of various partially finished projects. Drawings, sewing, crocheting, embroidery, poems, stories, etc. I’m literally writing, like, a paragraph of something and then moving to something else and then something else and then the original thing again. I have literally hand sewn a life size ‘human’ out of old t-shirts and given it form by stuffing it with plastic grocery sacks. Hopefully an influx of updates will be appearing soon.
> 
> There’s probably something else important to go here, but I have ADHD and schizophrenia, the combination results in quite a few memory lapses. So whatever.
> 
> Chow for now ~TheUltimateFanGirl7

Soulmates had been a natural part of life since before the notion of passing on history had even begun to be conceived. They were simply a fact of the world: the sky is blue, geese can fly, people have soulmates. From the moment a child was born they knew their soulmate. It wasn’t that they had been introduced or knew their name or anything like that. No, it was the sense of just knowing. You got impressions of emotions and the faintest traces of physical sensations. It got stronger the first time you met them. As soon as your eyes met, it felt like eve her thing just... clicked into place. Like a whole you didn’t know was there had suddenly been filled and everything was right in the world. However you also felt when your soulmate died, even if you’d never actually met them. Only two people were recorded to have lived longer than a few days after the death of their soulmate, and both of them had described the experience as if a giant piece of themselves had been ripped away from them quite suddenly and left them feeling empty and cold. Both had eventually gave into their sorrow and took their own lives. It was not something anyone ever wanted to experience.

\§/ \§/ \§/

When Marinette Dupain-Cheng was twelve years old, her parents were awoken in the middle of the night by a blood-curdling scream coming from their daughter’s bedroom. When they rushed into her room they found her sitting up in her bed and sobbing, repeating over and over again,

“He’s dead, he’s gone, hurts, hurts, hurts, gone, gone, gone, he’s dead, he’s dead.”

Sabine and Tom immediately knew what happened and hurried over to her, pulling her into their arms and murmuring soft words of comfort, despite knowing that such actions were useless. They knew they would loose their daughter any day and that whole time she would be stuck with a gaping nothingness inside her. They closed the bakery until further notice in order to spend as much time with their daughter as they could while they still could. It was hard, as she adapted to the emptiness and they had to live with the knowledge of her impending death, but they did what they could.

\§/ \§/ \§/

Despite all odds, Marinette managed to survive. She had always been a special, talented girl, but she was a wallflower and a doormat and just so young. The last two people to survive the loss of their soulmate had both been much older: one being mid thirties and the other approaching seventy. The younger the matron of a rundown orphanage and the older the mayor of a struggling town. Marinette didn’t have a purpose to live for. She didn’t have the age advantage of the others. But she still lived. Sure, she became cold and bordering mean, but she was still alive. She made a lot of changes after that.

Her eyes hardened to frozen ice chips, the fractures of her soul bond appearing in the faint crack-like lines splintering across her irises out from her pupils. She sheared her hair into a sharpened bob (short at the back of the neck and slowly lengthening down the sides of the head towards the face) and bleached the ends white. She only ever wore black, favoring a leather wrap jacket over a tank with skintight leather pants and stilettos boots. She never smiled anymore and only spoke in short, clipped sentences. Nobody ever approached her, after several attempts by former friends and even random students had ended in only silence and a penetrating stare everyone stopped bothering to try. Chloe didn’t even bother tormenting her anymore, not when her antics didn’t receive even a hint of a response. They Dupain-Cheng family hadn’t told anyone what happened, not even the school officials for fear of the attention and pity it would bring to their daughter.

They mourned for the boy they never got to know who died to young, and they mourned for their daughter who did die with him, for even if she still technically lived on, she was not their sweet little sunshine of a daughter anymore. She had lost most of her capability for a motion and compassion and empathy, and that which remained she locked behind a wall inside. She could never fully get rid of the pain, but she could lessen it by blocking out some of the things it used to latch on so tightly.

\§/ \§/ \§/

When she was thirteen, Marinette saved an old man from being hit by a car, because no matter how broken and cold and empty she was, she still could not stand by while an innocent was in danger if their was something she could do about it. She neatly pulled him out of harms way, accepting his thank you with a small nod and the best smile she could manage without being obviously fake by it (so a slight upturn of one corner of her mouth).

When her classmate turned into a stone monster and she found a pair of magical earrings accompanied by a tiny floating... thing, she could feel nothing but indifference. She did her best for the city, and in time became better at acting when in costume and as such was able to appear cheerful and fun and... full, to the citizens, evening managing to fool her partner and eventually, she found, the guardian who had given her the Miraculous.

Tikki knew, of course, she could feel the gap where there should have been another soul, but for her chosen’s sake she didn’t say anything, especially as Marinette seemed adapted well enough, or at least as best as possible. When Master Fu began training her to take up his mantle as guardian, she finally met the rest of the Kwami. They could all feel the emptiness inside of her, even if they couldn’t feel it as strong as Tikki could. The more time they spent with her during her guardian training, the more they loved her and internally swore to protect her. By the time Master Fu officially passed on the box to her, they would have followed her into battle against the entire world if she had so asked. She was more real with them than any one of their previous wielders, and around them she was able to relax more, their magic and presence blocking out the cold and filling some of the void within her.

\§/ \§/ \§/

When Tom and Sabine perished in a fire at the bakery when she was fifteen, Tikki stepped up into the role of mother figure for the poor, broken child, even though she was placed with a foster family and her caretaker requested the title. The rest of the Kwami all jostled for their official position in the new family unit until Trixx decided that since Marinette cared for them and treated them almost human and had essentially adopted them, then she was their mother. The title stuck, even if Marinette slowly began calling Tikki Mother just as the rest began calling her herself Mother.

The Kwami were the only ones able to get a legitimate smile out her, no matter how small it was, and even managed a soft laugh once or twice. She took to wearing two or three miraculous at a time, despite the strain it put on her, just so that her ‘children’ could go out and see more of the world (or at least Paris anyway). The problem is that none of them realized the damage it was actually doing to her. Her soul, already torn apart but the death of her soulmate, was broken further and further through the channeling of Kwami magic. The constant strain of Hawkmoth’s magic over the city and the frequent need to transform into Ladybug and fight Akumas took a toll on her, even more so because the miracle of creation she used to restore the lives and damages done during a battle was powered by the magic contained in her when she was merged with Tikki. Her soul was breaking down more and more as the days went by, and none of them realized it. At least, not until it was far too late to do anything about it.

\§/ \§/ \§/

As the years passed and Ladybug and Chat Noir continued the war - for that’s really was what is was at that point, a war - Marinette’s soul slowly fractured further. She forced herself not to react harshly when Chat claimed they were soulmates and the on,y reason the bond hadn’t clicked into place was because of the magic of the miraculous interfered and if they would just expose their identities to each other, then everything would be okay. As time went on, she became more and more frustrated with him, snapping that they weren’t soulmates, lecturing to him about how that wasn’t how the miraculous worked, and even avoiding him when at all possible. Chat ignored her every time.

When they finally tracked down Hawkmoth and she ripped his broach from him, it all came to a head and boiled over. By this time, they were twenty-two. She was designing for Jagged Stone and Clara Nightingale, even if she didn’t have the same passion for it as she once did it was still something she was kinda able to enjoy and it paid well. Her classmates - except Chloe - were all working multiple dead end jobs and barely making ends meet having put all their hopes in some lying girl back in lycee.

As she watched emotionless as the police led the man behind Hawkmoth away, Chat approached her and asked to speak with her privately. She agreed, knowing as the guardian she needed to take back his miraculous anyway now that the threat had been vanquished.

But when they got to the rooftop and were alone together, Chat pulled her to him and placed his lips on hers in a kiss. She stood stock still, not reciprocating at all and just blinked at him as he tried to get more into the kiss and attempted to get her to respond. He pulled away after a minute, looking at her in confusion, asking,

“What’s wrong, M’Lady? We defeated Hawkmoth, that means now we can reveal our identities to each other and be together. We are soulmates, after all.”

VIOLENCE BEGINS

That was the final straw for her. She’d survived ten years with a broken bond because Paris needed her. She would continue living because the Kwami needed her. But she would not stand by any longer as Chat insisted they were bonded and forced himself on her. Not when her soulmate was gone, dead. Not when she had to live with the coldness and emptiness and pain for the rest of her life. The final shards of her soul cracked apart and shattered, her mind going with it.

With an animalistic screech she threw herself at him. He jumped back, startled, before fighting back in an attempt to defend himself, all the while trying to placate her. Unfortunately for him, he only made it worse.

\§/ \§/ \§/

Their battle was long and bloody. They wielded miraculous meant to balance each other out, neither of which was meant to fight its opposite. But Marinette was insane and fighting to kill, back by the latent Kwami magic absorbed into her body through exposure due to her guardianship. Chat hadn’t been a very good fit with his miraculous to begin with, the connection and compatibility made worse by his actions against his partner and the guardian. All of Paris watched as the two of them fought, day after day, night after night, somehow never needing to stop for food or bathroom or sleep or recharging, for two months straight. It was a period of confusion and unrest and fear greater than even during Hawkmoth’s reign. No one understood why their heroes were fighting. Finally, it ended. Ladybug managed to get Chat Noir’s baton away from him before hurling him from the top of the Eiffel Tower. She then swung down and asked to his crumpled form, gazing at him dispassionately. He was still alive, though barely, due to the miraculous on his finger. She knelt down to look at him, her finger trailing down his face and along his jaw as his cloudy, pain-filled eyes tried to focus on her. His breath was coming in ragged gasps and he kept coughing up blood. Suddenly, she stood up, pulling his baton from where she had attached it to her hip, she extended it and began beating him with it, ignoring his groans and cries and screams, as she screeched unintelligible noises at him. After a few minutes of this, she stopped leaning down to glare him straight in the eyes. She reached down and gripped his chin tightly, forcing him to look at her as the last shreds of her sanity managed to grind out in low, broken words,

“You... not... mate... Dead. He... dead... Years... hurt... You... not.”

Before she stood upright and picked up her foot, driving her heel straight into his skull, cracking it open and going through, sending blood and brain mush gushing out. Then she slipped his ring from his finger and swung away. She was never seen again.

**Author's Note:**

> IF YOU’RE HERE TO SKIP THE VIOLENCE:  
> Marinette went insane, brutally murdered Chat Noir after a confusing two-month-straight battle, took his ring, and vanished.  
> ———
> 
> A few details for context:  
> Since Marinette was icy and didn’t care about anyone, she ignored Lila’s existence so they never argued or anything and she didn’t try to save her class  
> Adrien never went to public school  
> Gabriel wasn’t Hawkmoth
> 
> Criticism Is the root of improvement, and I’ve never actually written out the darkness by brain naturally develops, so I’d love to ‘hear’ your thoughts.
> 
> If anyone can accurately guess what happens next (I’ll message you if you do) you’ll get a shout out and you can choose between one of these:  
> Choosing her new civilian name, choosing her new name when using the miraculous, designing her new costume, prompting and naming a side story, just a shout out, a completely unrelated crack story.
> 
> Also, I’m looking for a beta reader for my stories, because nothing I’ve written in years has been beta read. I had an editor for a while, but they picked up more clients and had to drop me.


End file.
